Jet Setter. Go Getter. Nothing Better.: el camino de lagrimas

Being back in Guatemala had been...good. It's been great seeing the fam again, being so close to the lake, working with the kids, etc. What's less amusing is the hours of data organization, being attacked by mosquitoes, and regulatin. We have a little over 1600 kids in our nutrition program now, and are in the process of adding two new communities. Things are starting to slip through the cracks...thus the regulatin.

Working here can't really be described as efficient, but the promoters are--I hope--doing their best, given the crying babies we leave in our wake. Most are not fans of the hanging scales...something about being suspended in a diaper-looking swing on what could be a meat hook...I don't blame them. Por eso, el camino de lagrimas.

Working in the communities has also reminded me of how much I hate insects and spiders. The words sancudos and aranas make me wince. Flies, for example, are gross. Is it absolutely necessary that they exist in the food web/chain or can they be eradicated? Just buzzin around, all up in your grill. While I was making my rounds, visiting families with kids suffering from third-degree malnutrition (the worst), flies just swarmed EVERYwhere. It was gross. These visits were even more disheartening than the armies of flies, though. These kids were living, for the most part, in awful conditions. A good majority of them had no shoes (typical) and were covered in layers of dirt, their hair discolored from chronic malnutrition, their eyes too big for their thin faces, tiny bodies. Sometimes, you want to reganar las mandres, but oftent he mothers aren't in much better shape. And to make the situation even better, many of the men are too machista to stop having kids. One family had five kids, three suffering from third degree malnutrition, and one more on the way. Another family has nine kids, with a newborn, three severely malnourished. Sad story. It's pretty humbling to see all those families, though. When we came across a kid who was in the normal range for weight AND height, I almost felt like congratulating the mom...for something that should be the rule, not the exception.

But ya know, it's not really my place to say who should do what. To each his own. I've heard some interesting perspectives here, though. For example, one woman was telling me that she believes farmers are smarter than students and professors because they make more money and have nice homes. They get paid three times a year from the three different harvests. "The professors don't have homes like theirs." Very interesting. Sex is another interesting topic. I had a conversation with someone about oral sex and porn. This grown woman was talking about how she couldn't believe that her (now ex-) husband had asked her to give him head and proposed anal, etc. I couldn't help but laugh at the way she talked about it. So, imagine her reaction when she saw a porno for the first time. This was some intense stuff sent to a friend of hers by her kids in the states (interesting mother-child relationship, yeah?). I didn't push her for details, but it involved large animals and pregnant women. She also mentioned her appreciation for the black men in the vid. Cracked me up, imagining this group of indigenous Mayan women holed up in a room watching this porno, blushing from both the vid and the quetzalteca. Hilarious.